Placing Orders

To see what functionality exists on the various platforms, see Platform Capabilities under the Get Started tab. Atom Trader Pro functionality is discussed here, much of which applies to the other platforms.

Trading from Charts

You may have seen chart based order processing on other platforms, but few compare with our ease of use and functionality. This is what you do:(1) in Tools, Preferences, ensure that Chart Trading is enabled (tick the box);(2) on the chart, at the price level indicated by the cursor’s position, right-click and select the desired order you wish to place; and(3) the Order Entry window appears. Modify your parameters to suit and press Submit.

Using the Order entry window

Standard Orders

(1) Click on the list of Instruments on the left hand column to bring up the currency pair you wish to trade, or right click on the relevant currency pair to “Open Order Panel”. If you have a chart open, you can select a new currency pair from the drop down menu as well.

(2) When you tick “Entry” on the Order Panel, you are given options to buy at market, buy stops (using the bid or the ask price to trigger), a buy limit (i.e. the ask is equal or better than your entry price) and a buy (MIT or Market if touched) [1] . The opposite applies for Sell market and entry orders.

(3) Note that your Stop Order can be triggered off both the ASK price and the BID price, giving you more flexibility in your strategy, especially if helps you with fine-tuning your risk-reward parameters on any given trade.

(4) Proceed then to set any Slippage factor in pips, this being the maximum deviation in entry price you would accept on entry from your requested buy/sell entry level. See below for more details about Slippage;

(5) Set your Stop Loss which can be set using the Bid or the Ask price; and

1MIT orders are used to give more flexibility around the entry when you also set a slippage value which would mean that the order would still be executed above the buy limit (MIT) order up to the maximum slippage value. If you were seeking a buy fill on a spike lower in a fast moving market, this may help you to get filled where you would otherwise not be able to if you were using a simple Buy Limit.

(6) Set your Take Profit which is a limit order only and is set using the Bid price when you are entering an underlying Buy trade and using the Ask price if you are entering an underlying short trade.

(7) Then, check the order and click on “Submit”. If “One Click” is enabled at the bottom of your trading screen, your order will be dispatched immediately. If “One Click” is unticked, a confirmation window will appear summarising your Order conditions and requesting you to click again on “Submit”.

(8) NB: if you have the corresponding chart open to the right of your Order Panel, your orders will appear on the chart as you enter them in the Order Panel to give you a visual representation of what the trade will look like on the chart, once executed. See: Tools-Preferences-Chart-Order Visualisation.

WARNING! Assuming that the orders Valiadation mode is desabled, a stop loss order to sell, placed with a trigger price equal or above the market bid price at the time the order is sent, and/or a stop loss order to buy placed with a trigger price equal or below the market ask price at the time the order is sent, will be triggered for execution immediately and without prior warning. As soon as the conditions for triggering are satisfied, the orders are sent for execution immediately

WARNING! Stop loss orders may not be executed in certain circumstances:

1) For example, where it would increase of the net exposure where your Use of Leverage already exceeds 100%, or if the exposure increase would cause the Use of Leverage to exceed 100 %. You must carefully plan your trading strategy to avoid occurrences of this nature.

2) The margin requirements for a stop loss order are calculated when the order is triggered and sent for execution. If the order execution cannot be processed for lack of margin, the order will be rejected and you will be warned accordingly that the order is rejected for insufficient margin.

Place Bid/ Place Offers (on the ECN Platform only)

Place Bid/ Place Offers are advanced orders that allow you to act as a market maker yourself, effectively placing your order directly into the inter-bank market and avoid paying the spread! You specify the levels you want to buy and sell at or better (similar to limit orders). As soon as your order is accepted, margin is reserved, speeding up the execution processing.

This is what you do:

(1) If you want to submit a buy limit order below the current market price without paying the spread, click on Place Bid and set the notional amount, the time the order remains valid and press Submit.

(2) If you want to submit a sell limit order above the current market price without paying the spread, click on Place Offer and set the notional amount, the time the order remains valid and press Submit.

Please note:

If the order is not fully executed, the unexecuted amount remains in the market until it is filled, cancelled or expires; and

Place Bid and Place Ask orders have priority in the order book over most recent orders placed at the same bid/offer price.

Adding “if done” Related Orders

Once you have submitted your initial Order, open the Order tab and right–click on the specific order to add any related “if done” orders you may wish to include such as “Add Stop Loss” and/or “Add Take Profit”.

You can also specify the time period (Good Till Cancelled / Good For / Good Till) allowed for the system to work the order.

OCO “One-cancels-other”

If you submit two entry orders (excluding Place Bid and Place Offer orders), you can tick both orders in the Order display rows, right-click and apply the “Group to OCO” function. Once one of the 2 orders is triggered, the other order within the OCO group is cancelled. Each order can be created with its own Related Orders, set either at inception or using the right-click edit function in the Order display rows.

If you wish to dis-apply the OCO function or de-link the two legs of the order, tick both OCO Orders, right-click and apply the “Ungroup to OCO” and the 2 orders shall be separated.

Adding a Trailing Stop to an existing position or entry order

Trailing stop feature can be used to enhance the control on both stop loss and entry stop orders. It allows adjustment of stop and entry levels according to the underlying market price path, seeking to get a better entry or limit potential loss or take profit more efficiently.

Once the market or entry order has been placed, right-click on the relevant row in the Positions window (if a market order) or the Orders window if an entry order and click on “Add Stop Loss”, “Edit Order” or “Edit Entry Order”, as applicable.

The minimum value of the trailing step parameter is 10 pips as a default.

When you Submit the Trailing Step request, your stop loss and entry levels are shifted by the amount of the trailing step value set as soon as the market price moves a distance equal to the level of the specified Trailing Step. Each time the market price move causes a stop level shift to occur, the then current market price will be used as a new anchor for further stop level shifts to occur in the future.

Slippage [2]

When sending market orders, clients run the risk of slippage. Slippage is the difference between the price of execution and the price you see when sending an order. When an order’s amount exceeds the best bid/ask amount at a given level, the next best price will be used to fill the order, producing price slippage.

[2] Slippage arises from a phenomenon known as “ping delay” that exists in any online trading environment, being the time taken for an order to arrive on the execution server from the clients’ computer. Connections between the different market participants make the network highly complex and the path of execution varies depending on the location of the counterparties.

Under normal market conditions, it is unlikely to experience slippage, but it becomes more common as market is in a phase of heavy trading, especially upon news release. At such times, the workload of orders increases substantially, often in both demand and supply and the time window between the instant where the client see the price he is willing to trade and the instant of the execution is enough to experience slippage. Slippage can be either positive or negative.

Slippage control function is activated from the single instrument pane. Specifying a slippage amount makes the order conditional upon available liquidity, which means that the order may sometimes not be executed.

Slippage can also be set in Tools – Preferences – Default Preferences for Manual Trading.

Any negative slippage on an order set with a 0 slippage will result in the order being rejected.

If slippage is set to 5 pips, which means that the order will be allowed for execution if the negative slippage does not exceed 5 pips. If execution does not occur within this range, you receive a rejection notification.

Allowing negative slippage increases the probability of being executed, at the cost of obtaining a less favourable price. Limiting negative slippage decreases the probability of the order being executed, but reduces or eliminates the risk of order being executed at an unfavourable price.

Maximum negative slippage can be set at your discretion for each single currency pair on the market overview pane.

Positions Merger

Users may enter off-setting positions to an existing one. The position summary discloses the amount traded on each side and the individual transaction details but labels the position summary as flat. At this stage, single positions can be selected, edited (by adding contingent orders) or cancelled. Alternatively, positions can be selected and expressed in a single net aggregate exposure using the merge function.

Whilst two offsetting transactions result in a flat exposure, both are still valued at current market prices, that is, a long position at the bid price, and a short position at the ask price, but in fact, both transactions are matched through the merger process.

Please note:

You are not charged a commission using the merge function

Merge can be performed on transactions where the exposure is not flat. This process just consolidates several transactions into a single one.

If merger involves all off-setting components, the transactions will disappear from the position structure and the exposure components will disappear from the position summary.

Transactions subject to a merger must be free of any conditional order associated with the transactions.

Cross mergers between different currency pairs are not possible.

Warning! A maximum of 100 individual positions /actually open or potential (pending orders) can be open in the DEMO environment, while the maximum is 200 in the LIVE environment. Orders linked to a position (take-profit and stop-loss orders) are not taken into account in this maximum. Should the number of open positions/pending orders reach the maximum, the trader is prevented for opening new positions, or enter new pending orders. A message is dispatched upon such event warning the trader in the message log, and in the activity log. Merging open positions in part or in full and/or cancellation of pending orders, will decrease the number of open positions/pending orders, therefore enabling the trader to open new individual positions, and/or enter new further pending orders.

CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 57% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money. You should make sure you understand the risks involved, seeking independent advice, if necessary.

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